A study conducted in 2010, showed that 20% of girls and 25% of boys were bullied or bullied someone within the past month (CHOP, 2020). Bullying throughout school is extremely prevalent and I know that when I was in school (K-12) I had witnessed bullying. Not only does bullying in school impact a child’s education, but it can also play a major role in how they view themselves as they get older. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Center for Violence Prevention (2020) discussed a study conducted in 2011 where it showed that “bullying at age 14 predicted violent convictions between ages 15 and 20, self-reported violence at age 15 to 18, low job status at age 18, and drug use at 27 to 32 years of age.” This shows that the impact of bullying can last throughout a lifetime.
Continuously, when it comes to bullying and its impact on one’s education, a study conducted by UCLA (2010) shows that bullying has a direct link with one’s low academic achievement. This study also discussed that students that are bullied are less likely to participate in class discussions out of fear of judgment and then those students do poorer in school and that students that do poor and are labeled as dumb are more likely to be bullied. This could easily be seen as a perpetuating issue that could be incredibly hard for one to break and would explain the lack of academic achievement and the lifelong issues that bullying can cause.
Not only does bullying impact one’s educational experience, but it can also take a major toll on their physical and mental health. Bullying can cause stomach pains, headaches, trouble sleeping, and cause low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and even violent outbursts. Surprisingly, bullying can have an impact on the bully. Public School Review (2022) stated that the bully is “more likely to engage in violent behavior, to steal or vandalize property, to smoke, to drink, to report poor grades, and to carry a gun.” And that bullies are much more likely to engage in violent behavior as an adult and get into significantly more trouble.
What can be done to eliminate bullying in schools? Bullying would be near impossible to eradicate but in order to try and reduce prevalence, schools can increase awareness and show what bullying looks like as it can be displayed in various ways. Also, a setlist of rules needs to be in place AND enforced. If a school has antibullying policies but no one enforces them, students won’t take it seriously and continue with the problem behavior.
Overall, bullying is a huge issue within the school systems that can cause detrimental consequences on all parties involved and it’s essential that schools do all they can to try and fix the problem behavior before it follows children into adulthood.
Bullying in schools. Center for Violence Prevention. (2022, February 15). Retrieved March 24, 2022, from https://violence.chop.edu/bullying-schools
How does bullying affect a student’s academic performance? Public School Review. (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, 2022, from https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/how-does-bullying-affect-a-students-academic-performance
I enjoyed reading your post and thought that you made a lot of great points. Bullying is a form of school-related aggression and “involves a disparity of power between the bully and victim(s), occurs repeatedly, can take a direct form, such as hitting, kicking, or name-calling, or can be more indirect, such as spreading rumors about another person or ostracizing someone” (Kowalski & Limber, 2007; Wang et al., 2009 as cited in Gruman et al., 2017).
I agree with your statement: “Bullying would be near impossible to eradicate but in order to try and reduce prevalence, schools can increase awareness and show what bullying looks like as it can be displayed in various ways.” I actually wrote about bullying in my blog post as well so I already have some research done regarding this topic. Kayla S. Shafer and Michael J. Silverman (2013) suggests music therapy as a prevention and intervention for bullies and victims of bullying. In this scholarly article, Shafer and Silverman applied social learning theory as a framework to conceptualize the behaviors and cognitions of bullies and victims (2013). In doing this, authors reviewed various literature that determines the characteristics and behaviors of bullies and victims (Shafer & Silverman, 2013). As a results, authors proposed a social learning theory approach to music therapy interventions (Shafer & Silverman, 2013). However, this will still not completely eradicate bullying but perhaps it may decrease it and/or help victims of bullying.
References
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE.
Shafer, K. S., & Silverman, M. J. (2013). Applying a social learning theoretical framework to music therapy as a prevention and intervention for bullies and victims of bullying. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 40(5), 495-500. doi:10.1016/j.aip.2013.07.004
I enjoyed reading your post! It was similar in content to mine and you brought up intriguing additions to this discussion on cyberbullying. You mentioned how eliminating bullying in schools would be near to impossible. I agree with that. The act of bullying has been around since the beginning of time. There are even countries that bully other countries. This is a learned behavior and it is a behavior that is either accepted or rejected. In order to stop something like bullying completely we would have to reject the behavior as a whole. This will not happen because some people see a need for bullying and therefore find some sort of justification in that behavior. There are plenty of instances where the bully ends up bullying for revenge. “Bully-victims feel justified in their actions because they, too, have been harassed and tormented” (Gordon, 2020).
“8 Motives Behind Why Kids Cyberbully” (Sherri Gordon, July 10 2020).
https://www.verywellfamily.com/reasons-why-kids-cyberbully-others-460553